For those of you who are fans of the late Robert B. Parker's detective stories (Spenser, Jesse Stone, Sunny Randall, etc.), the eighth Jesse Stone movie Jesse Stone: Benefit of the Doubt will be broadcast in HD on Sunday May 20 on primetime CBS.

Unlike the first four films, the fifth through eighth movies are original scripts, not based on a Parker novel.

Tom Selleck reprises his role as Jesse Stone, the Chief of Police in the New England small town of Paradise, Mass. The stories are beautifully filmed in HD with a solid supporting cast that includes Viola Davis and Kathy Baker as deputies. The Jesse Stone novels are tight and stylish "police procedural" stories, fully adult in nature and well written. Jesse Stone is a complex character who struggles with an alcohol addiction, his feelings for his ex-wife, his demanding job, and a series of beautifull girlfriends. Tom Selleck is at least 20 years older than the Jesse Stone character in the novels, but I'll have to say he has been uniformly excellant in the first seven films.

No, these are not action films. Most often, Jesse fires a single shot in a scene near the end of the film.

If you missed the prior broadcasts these were the earlier films:

Stone Cold (2005, available on DVD)Jesse Stone: Night Passage (2006, available on DVD)Jesse Stone: Death In Paradise (2006, available on DVD)Jesse Stone: Sea Change (2007, available on DVD)Jesse Stone: Thin Ice (2009, available on DVD)Jesse Stone: No Remorse (2010, available on DVD)Jesse Stone: Innocents Lost (2011, available on DVD)

Note: If you want to catch up, view Jesse Stone: Night Passage first, as the novels were filmed out of order, and Night Passage is the series beginning, relating how a drunken Los Angeles homicide cop got his job after a painfull divorce.

I wouldn't mind police procedurals if they were rare, brief, inventive, and well executed like these. But the constant weekly drumbeat of serial killers and the cops that chase them on countless television series (CBS, I'm looking at you), it's waaaay too much. Maybe Americans are obsessed with crime because every time they turn on their TV's, that's all they see. Crime, crime, all the time.

What I find so annoying is that all of the real cops look so incompetent compared to the TV cops. The real cops chase people for years and never find them. The real cops don't even collect DNA or forensic evidence of any kind in most cases, because the crime lab costs money not in the budget.

The wife and I count the blood and guts stories every night on the news. Here is sunny California, there are 3.4 stories about shootings, traffic accidents, family violence, etc. for every other type. Obviously the cops are losing.

I just noticed that the first three TV movies (Night Passage, Stone Cold,and Death In Paradise) are available in NetFlix streaming. However I reccomend the DVDs as the best alternative, as the streaming versions suffer greatly from the video compression used. AFAIK BluRay is not an option.

The best version you will see is the HD broadcast. But CBS typically broadcasts these once and repeats it only once some months later. The area of Nova Scotia that subs for Paradise, Mass. has gorgeous scenery, and the TV movies have better Cinematography than most. I enjoy watching these in the Home Theater on the front projector.

.... I was worried that there would not be anymore after Selleck got Bluebloods. This is good news.

I've read some interviews with Tom where he talks about the deal. I've forgotten exactly how the deal was made, but my understanding was that it was something along the lines of CBS wanting to turn Jesse Stone into a series but Tom wanting to do something different for the series.

So the deal was that they'd let Tom do something different for the series but he had to keep doing Jesse Stone specials.

I just noticed that the first three TV movies (Night Passage, Stone Cold,and Death In Paradise) are available in NetFlix streaming. However I reccomend the DVDs as the best alternative, as the streaming versions suffer greatly from the video compression used. AFAIK BluRay is not an option.

The best version you will see is the HD broadcast. But CBS typically broadcasts these once and repeats it only once some months later. The area of Nova Scotia that subs for Paradise, Mass. has gorgeous scenery, and the TV movies have better Cinematography than most. I enjoy watching these in the Home Theater on the front projector.

I think either Hallmark or Hallmark Movie Channel airs the older ones in HD every so often. Usually they show two or three in a row if you can find them.

Thomas Jane is the right age, build, the right height and I think he could easily do this character as memorably. Selleck is wonderful, has immense gravitas, but would have better served as Spenser, who's ancient (or immortal), much happier, wittier, as introspective and a whole lot of RB Parker fun.

I enjoy these also, but have come to the party late and never watched any on CBS original broadcast. I've been able to catch the HD broadcasts of Stone Cold, Night Passage, Death in Paradise, and (most recently finally) Sea Change on Hallmark or Hallmark Movie Channel over the past year. I don't think they've ever aired Thin Ice, No Remorse or Innocents Lost, at least not yet. So I still haven't seen those.

After seeing them in HD (even though I have to skip through commercials and deal with occasional on-screen graphics) I'm not enthused about watching them on DVD. This series would be nice on Blu-ray.

For what it's worth, I found the plot of the latest movie to be extremely sparse. Yes, I know that is Robert B. Parker's style, but there can be too much of a good thing. I would have appreciated a few more details in this latest case, it felt like a half movie.

Enjoyed the presentation, DVRed yesterday. Plot seemed to wiz by so quickly at the end thought I had a DVR glitch. After the shipboard shootout, did the newspaper headline indicate he'd solved the mystery? Last scene I captured was one of his former officers changing his mind and rejoining the force. -- John

Exactly. I got it, he bottomed out and then recovered, aided by a relationship with sultry torch singer "Thelma". Then he figured out who the real boss of the drug trade was, killed the hit man, and Luther "Suitcase" Simpson returned. But it was all so sparse it seemed like some scenes were missing.

Either the writing or the editing seems to have been a notch downward in quality this time.

Exactly. I got it, he bottomed out and then recovered, aided by a relationship with sultry torch singer "Thelma". Then he figured out who the real boss of the drug trade was, killed the hit man, and Luther "Suitcase" Simpson returned. But it was all so sparse it seemed like some scenes were missing.

Either the writing or the editing seems to have been a notch downward in quality this time.

For what it's worth, I found the plot of the latest movie to be extremely sparse. Yes, I know that is Robert B. Parker's style, but there can be too much of a good thing. I would have appreciated a few more details in this latest case, it felt like a half movie.

I have to agree. This movie played more like a one hour special of the week. Why feature Kathy Baker at all; from Toledo of all things; and only for a short phone call? Might have been better to just omit her.

One question. Was the sniper after Jesse all along? Or was he after Sal (I believe that is his name), and Jesse just got in the way? Who was driving the speedboat that Sal "escaped on", and was it planned that way.

I thought is was good, but it sure was a slow moving plot. Is Tom Selleck coming back for the next one?

Jerry

Sadly, it seems, NO.

Selleck once said this film was "in the can" and another was being scripted but it seems things have since changed.

Quote:

"The eighth "Jesse Stone" movie, "Benefit of the Doubt," will be the last produced for CBS, its producer confirmed.

The most recent telecast of the Tom Selleck vehicle based on the popular Robert B. Parker novels aired on May 20 and attracted nearly 13 million viewers -- a hit by that standard. The audience, however, skewed very old, with only a 1.2 rating in the key sales demographic of adults 18-49. The rating among adults 50 and older was nearly 10 times that high. "

For me, it seems to have lost it's footing when they decided to drop Parker's books and go in their own direction. I like the Parker novels but never was keen on the CBS "lost job" direction - yet I watched. It seems others did not.